99% Invisible - 288- Guerrilla Public Service Redux

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

In the early morning of August 5, 2001, artist Richard Ankrom and a group of friends assembled on the 4th Street bridge over the 110 freeway in Los Angeles. They had gathered to commit a crime. Years before, when Ankrom was driving through downtown Los Angeles, he was going to merge onto the I-5 North. But he missed the exit and got lost. The I-5 exit wasn’t indicated on the green overhead sign. It was clear to Ankrom that the California Department of Transportation had made a mistake. And for some reason, this stuck with him. Ankrom, an artist and sign painter, decided to make the Interstate 5 North shield himself. He also decided that he would take it upon himself to install it above the 110 freeway. He would call it an act of “guerrilla public service.”

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. At some point in your life, you've probably encountered a problem in the built world, something that was poorly designed and the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, were a poorly painted marker on the road. I noticed this kind of stuff all the time, even more so now after creating this show. I'm sorry if you do, too, because you listen to this show. And mostly when we see these things, we grumble on the inside, and then do nothing. There are all sorts of reasons for our inertia.

We don't know how to fix it. It's not ours to fix. We could get in trouble. That's producer David Weinberg. You might notice these little design flaws for years, silently fuming, until one day. He called me instead, you know, okay, we're doing it. It was early Sunday morning, August 5th, 2001, in Los Angeles, California.

Richard Encrum and a group of friends were on the fourth street bridge over the 110 freeway. They were about to commit a crime. It's gonna be a high profile of dangerous situation. Not only could I get arrested, I could kill somebody, really. I was terrified of that. But let's back up. About 20 years prior, Richard Ancrum, an artist living in Orange County, was driving North on the 110 freeway. As he passed through downtown Los Angeles, he was going to merge onto another freeway, the I-5 North, but he missed the exit and got lost.

And for some reason, it just stuck with him. Years later, when Richard moved to downtown Los Angeles, he was driving on the same stretch of freeway where he'd gotten lost a decade before, when he looked up at the big green rectangular sign suspended above. I realize why I missed the exit is because it wasn't adequately signed. Bad way finding. The exit for the I-5 wasn't indicated on the green overhead sign. There was even a big open space where there should have been a blue and red interstate

shield, and above that, it should have said north. It was clear to Richard that CalTrans, the California Department of Transportation, had made a mistake. So Richard and artist and sign painter decided to make the interstate five north shield himself and install it in the place he thought it should have been all along, high above the 110 freeway. He would call it an act of guerrilla public service. All idealist to be sort of a public servant or actually to show what you can do with artwork. You can put in plain sight and have a functioning,

working thing for everyone to use. Richard started by studying LA freeway signs, holding up pantone swatches to perfectly match the pink color. He dangled over bridges to measure the exact dimensions of other signs. And most importantly, he downloaded the Necronomicon of California Road signage, the MUTKID. The MUTCD, the manual on uniform traffic control devices, quote, to provide for uniform standards and specifications for all official traffic control devices in California. It's not a beach read.

I have it as more of a lazy Sunday afternoon read. All the specs are online so people can bid on projects. Richard wanted his sign to be built to the exact specifications of cow trans, which were designed to be read by motorists traveling at high speeds. The shield with a five on it is three feet, roughly high and wide. It's less than eight of an inch, barely an eighth of an inch thick aluminum. It's still pretty strong. And above that, I put the word north, and that was about 14 inches by 5 feet. And again, I used the same tight face that was there and the same signs.

I tried to match everything as close as I could, so it wouldn't be obvious. CalTrans didn't do it. Richard's brand new additions had to blend in perfectly with the existing signage, which had been collecting dirt and smog for decades. I sprayed the whole thing with a really thin glaze of grey, and knocked down the shine. After he finished it, Richard signed his name on the back of it with a black marker, like a painter signing a canvas, then came the next phase of the project, the installation, which he planned with the precision of a bank heist.

He bought a disguise, a white hard hat and an orange vest, so he'd look like a cow trans worker. Basically looked at part as best I could. And he made a decal for his pickup truck, meant to look vaguely official, that said, aesthetic deconstruction. The night before the installation Richard drove out to the site and hid some of his supplies so they'd be easy to get to the next morning. When I interviewed him he took me to the spot and showed me where he stashed his stuff.

Okay we're basically here. Right now the ivy isn't that thick but it was a lot thicker and I had what basically behind that tree it stashed the ladder and the signs and stuff. After he hit his things, he climbed a tree and just sat there, going through everything in his head. I just sort of calmed myself down by being there and hanging around with it the night before. Richard was worried that he might drop the sign or one of his tools onto the road below. Drivers going 60 plus miles an hour would have no time to react if something landed on the road in front of them, or worse, onto their car. That was a scariest thing about the whole project.

If somebody got hurt, you know, you have to live with that. And then the project got to have to sh** can in it because it would have defeated the whole idea. But despite some reservations, Richard was pretty confident he could pull the whole thing off, and he'd gone too far to turn back. And that brings us back to the morning of August 5th, 2001. Richard did not act alone. He asked several friends to film the installation from different vantage points. Amy Inoa was one of the friends he enlisted to film. We did it at 6am or 7am on a Sunday morning. It was tense because we all thought we were

going to get into trouble. Richard had chosen a Sunday morning to put up the sign, knowing that there would be little traffic and the morning light rising above the skyscrapers would be just right for filming. What he hadn't anticipated was that cow trans had also picked that morning to do work on the same stretch of highway. Yes, they happened to be doing some other work on the freeway just south of that sign. When they saw the cow trans workers, they thought about turning back. But I had s'mized after all this is a pretty large city that'd be more than one sying crew.

My assumption was they'd think the other guy was doing it. Richard parked his truck and when everyone was in position with their cameras, he went to work. The hardest part really was getting over the razor wire with the ladder. Once he was up on the catwalk nearly 30 feet above the highway, he started screwing in the new sine. Careful not to drop any screws on the catwalk nearly 30 feet above the highway, he started screwing in the new sign. Careful not to drop any screws on the cars below. Half way into it, we just felt like okay he's gonna get away with it. Look at that, is that amazing or what?

Oh look, he's folding up the stuff, he's got it up. The whole thing took less than 30 minutes. As soon as it was up Richard packed up his ladder, rushed back to his truck and blended back into the city. Wow! Oh my god! Awesome! I think we all went out to breakfast together afterwards and we were super relieved and really happy. Only a small group of people knew that the Interstate 5 shield with the word North hanging above the 110 freeway was a forgery. He didn't say to us, don't tell anyone, so our friends all knew about it, and we would drive by it, and we would just all feel really happy about it.

But it never sort of managed to leak out past that small group. For a while. For a while. For nine months, the secret stayed within a small community. And then Richard's friend Gary leaked the story. Oh, what the hell, Gary? Why can't you be cool? Just be cool, Gary! Richard's secret was out to CalTrans and to the press.

From the fake magnetic sign on his beat-up blue truck to a work order proclaiming rush. But he did is against the press. From the fake magnetic sign on his beat up blue truck to a work order proclaiming rush. But he did is against the law, but CalTrans says it has no plans at all to foul charges against him. After they found out what had happened, apparently they sent a corrupt, they were inspected. Richard was hoping to get his sign back

from CalTrans after they took it down. He was thinking he would hang it in an art gallery, but CalTrans didn't take the sign down. It passed the CalTrans inspection, because that's really the final test of how good the artwork is. It's stayed up for eight years, nine months and 14 days, I believe,

it's not exactly accurate, but it's pretty close to that. In interviews about the incident with other news organizations, CalTrans didn't exactly condone Richard's handiwork, but they were pretty kind about it. Here's the CalTrans spokesperson at the time. He did a good job, but we don't want him to do it again. And in fact, he did such a good job

that I'd like to offer him a job application. More than eight years after Richard's sign went up, he got a call from a friend who noticed some workers taking it down. Richard contacted CalTrans to ask if he could have his sign back. By the time I tracked him down, it had already been crushed into a bale going for China. Who knows what it turned into could be a waffle iron by now. After CalTrans took down Richard's sign, they replaced it with a brand new one. But this time, they incorporated his ideas into the new design.

They added the five north and the shield, not only to that sign, but to additional ones up the road. A little epilogue. Richard's highway sign is a happily ever after story. The sign worked, people appreciated it, no one got hurt, thankfully. Even Count Trans was really pretty nice about the whole thing. There's another gorilla sign story out of New York City, a group that calls itself the efficient passenger project has been hanging signs in New York subway stations to tell people

where they can board the train to make the most efficient transfers. The project is not at all affiliated with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, but the signs look just like MTA signs, black with white helvetical lettering. They say things like, board here for best transfer to the four, five, and six trains, or board here for best transfer to F and M trains. It's the kind of knowledge that you build up over time as a regular subway rider, and this guerrilla signmaker is offering it to everyone. And though some have applauded the signs, not all New Yorkers are pleased.

These are secrets, some say, that people should have to earn. They will unbalance the cars, they say, leave signage to the experts. The MTA, for their part, is taking down the signs as fast as they go up. MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told us in an email that, quote, posting of the signs is considered an act of vandalism. Point being, if you decide to undertake an act of guerrilla public service, just know it may not be received as such.

There have been a bunch of fascinating extra legal public service interventions since we aired this story a few years ago. A round up of those after this. The efficient passenger project isn't the only group that's gotten ambitious with modifying New York City subway signage. 99 PIs co-listed is here to talk about a similar intervention and some other creative works of guerrilla urbanism. That group actually led me to the story of a Rhode Island school of design student named Orion Murphy who also took up the challenge of Subway signage. And his project was pretty simple but also pretty clear. He installed a bunch of signs about exits at I level about five feet up on stair risers. The idea was that train passengers looking at the staircase from below could then figure out if those steps would take them where they wanted to go.

Sterisers are basically the flat front of a stair that you see from the front. Yeah, so if you're walking up the staircase, it would be right in front of you and you just sort of look at it and be like, oh, yeah, that's the exit I want. And you'd be able to, you know, more easily find your way through the system.

And there's a lot of real estate that signs haven't occupied all that much, actually. Yeah, that's interesting. And of course, like the other sign project though, these got taken back down and clearly the empty is not particularly open to gorilla innovations. No, they're not. And you've covered a bunch of these on the website over the years. Oh yeah, I'm super intrigued by these kinds of gorilla public service projects and those unpaid activists who do them. I mean, there's creative people who see everyday problems as civic design opportunities.

And mostly, of course, their work gets removed, but in some cases, these projects actually lead to something more permanent. Kind of like the highway sign that David talked about in our piece. Exactly. And up here in Northern California, there's another group called the San Francisco

Transformation Agency, which is, of course, a spoof on the city's transportation agency. And their crew has legally built a number of gorilla bike lanes around the city. And often they just kind of mark these out with ordinary orange traffic cones, which the city could just pick up and haul off. Since they get taken away, what they mainly do is highlight design problems with the current roads. Right. Yeah, in a lot of cases, yes. But in late 2016, they decided to create a protected bike lane on a stretch of road along

Golden Gate Park. And they used what are called soft hit or a safe hit post, which are a few feet high, and they have these little reflective stripes. You've seen them before on the side of a road. And these provide a visible and physical presence, but they're also easy to knock over, so they don't really pose at the injured a car. But instead of just taking the post down, the city did something pretty remarkable. They agreed to run with the idea and install protected land on that same spot. For legal reasons, they couldn't just leave up the post that had been put there first place, but same idea.

I mean, that seems like a pretty big win for like a really small group of people that are activists for bike safety. Yeah, it was totally a three point shot for these guys at the transformation agency. It met their three goals of one drawing attention to unsafe conditions, two increasing safety for cyclists and pedestrians, and three getting the city on board

with more rapid and effective safety improvements. And so this is, I mean, we've talked about ones that happened in California. You know, we're particularly rowdy bunch of leftists and such. I mean, does it happen in other places? Yeah, it does. It's not totally unique to California. And Cruz in New York have been known to install guerrilla bike lanes. And in Seattle, there's this group called the reasonably polite Seattleites that actually

made a lane that got taken down initially. And the DOT was like really nice about it. They politely offered to return the posts to the installers. And then finally, they actually agreed to just put that girl a lane back up. So there's activity in LA, there's activity in San Francisco, activity in Seattle. Is this a West Coast liberal thing? Yeah, it kind of seems like it. And there's a lot of them in our own backyard.

There's one in particular, too, that I talked to earlier this year, called the San Francisco Public Bench Project. And their thing isn't so much about road safety, is it is about just making the city a nicer place to live by installing free benches. So I contacted their founder for a 9-EYMPI feature, and he said, basically, like he's been on boards and committees

He's worked on promoting public space, but he really finds just building benches to be more rewarding And over the past 40 years, he's actually installed over 70 benches around the city and he keeps improving his design as he gives to And so how does that work? Does he just never gets permission to do him or just doesn't rogue no matter what? Well, sometimes he gets permits or he gets sort of bulk permits which make them cheaper And so how does that work? Does he just never gets permission to do them or just doesn't rogue no matter what? Well, sometimes he gets permits or he gets sort of bulk permits which make them cheaper. But other times he just works with these loopholes in the city codes which allow for sidewalk furniture if you kind of meet the right criteria and you don't obstruct sidewalks. So he sort of found the gaps to put them in. And in most cases, you know, somebody requests a bench for a specific spot and then they agree to keep an eye on it.

And then if the community feedback is positive, the bench becomes this permanent picture of the neighborhood. Right. And he also offers templates and instructions to anybody who wants to kind of DIY this and kind of take up the mantle too. So it's easier to beg for forgiveness and to ask for permission.

I think that's the basic idea. Yeah. So we got interventions in built spaces, like roads and sidewalks, but there's also a class of grill activity related to green spaces, too. Indeed, there is. The phrase grilligardoning covers a lot of ground, but essentially it refers to any active

planting where people aren't supposed to plant. So a community garden without a permanent would be a sort of simple example. And these can be about beautification, activism, food production, or a combination of goals. So it's literally grassroots reaction to top down urban plant. Yeah, in a lot of cases, it can be pretty small scale and incremental, like filling in vacant lots with nicer greenery. You can find actually recipes and design instructions online describing how to build what are called seed lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things.

And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to be able to do a whole lot of things. And then we're going to just about beauty, really. They're trying to create something functional in the environment. Yeah, I mean, there's this group in San Francisco of gorilla grafters. And their idea is, I mean, San Francisco's a pretty green city.

Right. We have a lot of greenery, but it's mostly sterile by design because they don't want fruit, creating messes and attracting animals. And these guys are grafting fruit-bearing branches on the trees in the city to try to provide like local food sources, which is pretty neat. Wow. And they don't care about the food messes and stuff. Well, I think their idea is that, you know, the good outweighs the bad.

Right. So far, these interventions have been about creating a better urban environment for the public good, but not every single one of these sign changers are doing it solely for other people's benefit. Oh yeah, no, no. There's definitely examples on the other into this spectrum. And there's a guy in particular who just hit the news from China who got caught painting an arrow in the middle of the street. And it was, you know, in broad daylight, I mean, there's cars around, he's captioning on video. And, you know, there's a turn arrow there already,

but he pointed this forward arrow because he wanted to make his commute faster, basically. And he had some argument that, oh, we could use more forward arrows at this intersection, but it was a pretty clearly self-ish act. So he took a turning lane and turned it into a optional go-forward and turning lane.

Exactly. And then he got fine for it. 99% of visible was produced this week by David Weinberg. His show Below the Ten is an ongoing series from KCREW that tells intimate stories about the people who live in neighborhood south of the Ten Freeway in Los Angeles. Check it out. 99% of visible is Avery Trollford, Emmett Fitzgerald, Shreveusef, Delaney Hall, Taren Mazza, composer Sean Rial, senior producer Katie Mingle, digital director Kurt Colstead, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7K OW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Robbe in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. in beautiful downtown Oakland, California.

We are part of Radio Topia from PRX, a collective of the best most innovative shows in all of podcasting. We are supported by the Night Foundation, and sticker loving listeners, just like you. You can find this show and join discussions about the show on Facebook, you can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI or we're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But the real 99PI HQ is at 99PI dot org. Radio Tapio. From PRX.